


Your Half of The Night

by katajainen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Headcanon in form of fic, M/M, Reminiscence, Sad Fluff, sleeping habits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 02:43:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18682507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/pseuds/katajainen
Summary: All through the years, they would have each other's back, even when asleep.





	Your Half of The Night

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this small, sad headcanon strike me when I tried to sleep. It wouldn't go away before I wrote it down.

The first time was after the dragon. Thorin had come and lain down next to him, on a bundle of rushes without a blanket. He had settled with his back to Dwalin’s, far enough not to touch, but close enough to share some body heat. Their feet were towards the fire in the middle of their huddling encampment, and their faces turned out against open sky and the night.

Time passed. They acquired blankets, tents, too-dearly paid shelters under leaking roofs, but this remained, grew stronger: Thorin’s warm, solid presence at his back, the two of them facing whatever might try to come for them.

In the war camps they would lie tight and close when they could, and one of them would stay awake while the other slept. The one night they did not care for watchfulness was the one that smelled of dead flesh burning, the stench seeped into their hair and skin and clothes. Neither of them slept, but clung to the other, sharing breath without words, lost in a grief too great for tears.

Yet again they went out into the world, yet again they endured. And over the years, some luck came their way, some meager reward of their travails. There was a house in the abandoned, sea-broken realm of ancient Belegost, repaired and rebuilt from ruin by their own hands, and in it a family hearth noisy with Thorin’s sister-children, but also a room where Dwalin might sleep and feel his love a warm weight leaning against his back. Stone below them, stone above them, and their faces looking out into the stone.

And perhaps Dwalin had less of the pride of his line, for he would have been content with that small life, with the coin gained with hammer and tongs and plain steel. But Thorin’s was a spirit that grew restless with age.

In the strange house under the hill the bed was barely long enough, but plenty wide for the two of them. Dwalin sighed into the vast softness of pillows, and felt the deep thoughts of his king and his love in the stiff line of his back. ‘Sleep,’ he said, and reached back to rest a hand on Thorin’s warm skin. ‘Let the morrow look out for its own.’

Between that night and the Mountain they camped on bare stone and forest floor, and slept in warm beds of heather and hay, or upon thin rushes on cold stone floors. And when they at last were there, in the halls and chambers thrumming _home_ beneath the touch of their hands, the good green marble enclosing them with the painful familiarity of a half-remembered dream, Thorin drifted away from him.

Afterwards, Dwalin could not tell how many nights Thorin had lain still and awake next to him before he would no longer return to their camp to sleep. Dwalin was closest to him, and he had not paid heed, had not dared to see before it was too late.

All that was half a lifetime ago, and as fresh as it was yesterday. Dwalin will be three hundred and forty next, and for a hundred and seventy of those years he has slept with his back against the wall.

The stone is cold, but the ghost he loves is colder still.


End file.
